


Starspun and Wrath

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: All Her Daughters [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Clones, GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2019-01-01 00:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12144384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: CT-0473 is a culled clone saved for another project, and paired with a younger clone of a different genetic source, SC-240. Over time, they name each other.





	Starspun and Wrath

CT-0473 is five when he's taken from his squad, and sent away from the main facility at Tipoca City. What defect he had to send him to somewhere that is very clearly not a clone training facility, he can't figure out. He had excelled at everything they trained him for, had been one of the best in his batch. There'd even been whispers that they might promote him to command track. He should never have been taken from the others.

When he's shown to a new barracks, he at least is reassured that he's not the only one pulled out. And no one looks like they're defective, just as confused as he is by being here. Wherever here is, with nothing he'd recognized as a training facility except these barracks.

Two days later, another brother is brought to fill in the last empty bunk, and they're finally briefed. Though it's the strangest briefing CT-0473 has ever had, and he doesn't understand why they're being given modules on watching after younger clones. Nor why they have to have a full medical check under sedation before they can be given their new assignment.

He wakes from the medical check with a new scar on his head, and a human watching him from a chair next to the bed. Younger than him, he thinks. Maybe three, if they're a clone like him and his brothers. If they're not a clone, he doesn't know how old they are.

"They made you stop feeling funny." They reach out to poke his new scar, and CT-0473 catches their hand before they can pull it back. "You buzzed before. No one else buzzes."

"What are you talking about?" He doesn't feel any different, certainly doesn't feel like he's no longer buzzing.

They shrug. "I don't know what it was, just that it was." They tug at their hand. "I need my hand back, please."

He frowns, but lets go. "Why are you here?"

"Because I was told to come here and wait for you to wake up." They bite their lip a moment. "I'm SC-240."

"CT-0473." He pushes himself upright, sitting with his legs dangling off the bed for a moment. This has to be the reason for the child-rearing modules, though why the long-necks want him and his brothers to look after these clones, he doesn't know. "Do you have your own barracks?"

"I share a room with my sister. SC-243." SC-240 shrugs. "I can show you where?"

At least then he'll know where she's supposed to be some of the time. "We should wait for someone to come and tell us what is going on. What our assignment is, other than medical and waiting."

"Why?" SC-240 frowns, her brow furrowing a little. "The computer tells us what we're supposed to do."

"What?" CT-0473 blinks. "What about the Kaminoans?"

"They don't like to be around us." SC-240 shrugs again. "Maybe that's why they sent you. So they wouldn't have to be around us."

If that's what the long-necks are doing, CT-0473 thinks it's a good thing they didn't leave him or his brothers with any weapons beyond their own training and bare hands. Because that means they've left SC-240 and her batch-mates alone. No one ever turns out good alone.

"We're not alone." SC-240 tilts her head a moment, before she holds out her hand to him. "Come on. I'll show you where things are. And where everyone goes after training and before lights-out."

Sliding off the bed, CT-0473 takes the offered hand, keeping a firm grip while SC-240 hops out of her chair. She tugs him after her, pulling him out of the room and into a hall that's utterly devoid of anyone else. Not even a brother with their own small girl dragging them wherever SC-240 is taking him.

And he doesn't think it's the same hall he walked down to medical, which means he has to find how to get back to his barracks. Unless those barracks were temporary, before they were transferred, but then, why wasn't there any mention of another transfer, or even just another briefing to be held after the medical check?

"Because they have computers to tell us things, of course." SC-240 says it as if it should be obvious, glancing up at him as they come to the doors at the end of the hall. "Here, I'll show you." She leads him through the door into a large room that looks like a mess-hall, with a scattering of his brothers and her sisters, always sitting in pairs. There are alcoves around the edge, and SC-240 tugs him over to one. "Here."

There's a screen and a sensor plate in the alcove, and after glancing down at SC-240, CT-0473 puts his hand on the sensor plate, blinking a moment when the screen lights up, text scrolling across it just slow enough for him to read it. There are new barracks for him and his brothers, and they're to begin training with the younger clones. Make sure the girls can hold their own with their weapons.

"What weapons?" He frowns at the screen, reading the rest almost on autopilot. "They didn't even give us blasters."

"They only give us things where we need them." SC-240 shrugs. "I can show you where the training room is, if you want?"

"Yes." If nothing else, CT-0473 can at least find out what the bloody assignment means, and if they're even going to have proper blasters.

SC-240 smiles, and pulls him across the room, all but skipping as she drags him down another corridor, to a set of heavier doors with another palm-scanner next to it that she stands on her toes to press her hand against. The doors open into an ante-chamber, where there are racks of weapons, most of them staves of various lengths.

He lets out a sigh of relief when he sees there are blasters as well, familiar as the ones he'd been training with in Tipoca City. Picking one up is like picking up a piece of himself, and checking it over is second nature.

"Those are new." SC-240 is holding one of the longer staves, frowning at the blaster he's holding. "We never had those before."

"These are the weapons my brothers and I are trained with." CT-0473 looks for a table, settling down at the one he finds at the end of the room, waiting for SC-240 to climb onto the bench next to him. "Blasters. You should always take it apart and make sure all the parts are in working order when you're issued a new one. And clean it after a training session."

* * *

CT-0473 is seven when SC-240, while they're rewiring a holo-projector to fill the training room with pinpoints of light, says, "Starspun."

"What?" He glances at her, a small frown on his face, before he returns his attention to the corridor to make sure no one is coming, and to listen for any alarms.

"You." She hisses a moment when the tool slips. "You're all threads of blazing fire and howling void. Spun out of stars. Starspun."

"Huh." He turns the name over in his mind, considering it from all angles like it's another visual puzzle. It feels _right_ , and he smiles a moment. "Starspun. I like it."

"I knew you would." SC-240 finishes tightening a connection, before wiggling her hand free of the device, and replacing the cover. "I think I have it. Is the corridor still clear?"

"For the moment." Starspun waves her forward, toward an alcove a bit down the hall, following close on her heels. They keep moving after that, sneaking through the halls until they get to the familiar heavy doors of the training room. The next part is going to be a little more difficult.

"Take the projector." SC-240 puts her hand on the scanner once he takes it, a frown on her face that puts a furrow between her brows. Doing whatever it is she does - that all her sisters can do - to circumvent the security features that are supposed to prevent them from bringing in contraband, or taking out blasters.

No one comes while they're doing that, and they don't pause in the anteroom, going through to the training room itself. Keeping the programs here from doing anything takes a little more effort, and Starspun reaches out in the way she'd taught him, letting SC-240 lean on his strength to keep the electronics dormant.

Another tense wait while she gets the projector set up, and then Starspun and SC-240 can flop down on their backs, watching the stars spin above their heads. Stars that maybe, hopefully, they'll walk among one day. When the Jedi come for their army.

* * *

Starspun is eleven, and in the middle of a firefight that wasn't supposed to happen, on a planet his brothers shouldn't be on, with SC-240 at his back, droids all around them, and LAATs bearing down with missiles.

"No, no, no, this isn't what's supposed to happen!" SC-240's staff caves in the side of another battle-droid, and Starspun can hear the rage and fear in her voice. Can feel it beating against his mind, along the bond they'd figured out how to make while training, and never let go.

"We should have had warning." They're supposed to be recon, supposed to be all but invisible between the talents of the SC batch and the training they went through. Detatched pairs and small teams to infiltrate and interrogate and spy. Sabotage, if they could, and it was what Starspun and SC-240 were good at. Best at, of any of their group.

"They don't know we're here." She sounds utterly certain, and Starspun has no reason to doubt that knowledge. "Their damned _idiot_ General didn't tell them."

Starspun can feel her building up to something, and he fires off several more rounds, taking out a handful of battle-droids that were trying to sneak up on them. Leaning more firmly against her back, and letting her draw off him. He'll sleep when they get back to base, sleep for a week if they'll let him, or at least for a solid twelve hours.

The fireball the erupts from one of the droid's tanks isn't caused by any missile, an eerie green flame that turns a more familiar orange at the edges before being lost in the black of smoke. Another bursts into existance among the scattering battle-droids, born of nothing but sheer fury and power, rolling along like a terrifying sort of destroyer droid.

Starspun can feel the pull in his bones, feels like he's being drawn thin by SC-240's strike, and at the same time, everything is too heavy. He can't bring up his blaster to keep the droids away from them, but it doesn't seem to matter, with the fire wheel leaving flames guttering all around them. Protecting them when SC-240 lets go of him, and the power she was using, and collapses heavy against his back.

"Do you think they'll get to us in time?" SC-240's voice is as thin as Starspun feels, and he shrugs his shoulders slightly.

"Before we pass out from exhaustion, or before we're burned to a crisp?"

"Either."

"Maybe."

He's not sure SC-240 is conscious when he sees the first white-armored men jumping from a LAAT, taking out the droids that haven't fled. His own sight is darkening, and he knows it's not local sunset yet. There are others running for them, fire-suppressent canisters in hand to quench the worst of the flames. Starspun holds onto consciousness with gritted teeth, and hands curled into fists, batting away hands that reach for him.

"Make sure she's all right first. I'm awake, and I'm fine."

One of the brothers snorts, and Starspun just glares at him until he feels SC-240 being lifted away from him, a hand both familiar and strange taking up his weight when he can't hold himself upright. Maybe he's not alright, but he needs to make sure SC-240 is taken care of first. Always.

"We're going to lift you now. And I don't care what you say, this is not fine." That has the acid bite of a medic's tone, and Starspun smiles a little. It reminds him of Lake and Bite, the two who'd spent most of the five years of their mutual training patching everyone else up after mishaps in the training room.

"May have exagerated a little. Her first." He lets the brothers pull his arms over their shoulders, stumbling as they get him to his feet, his gaze fixed on the brother carrying SC-240. "Didn't keep her from being scrapped for some clanker to do the job for the long-necks."


End file.
